If a guy had a Corvair motor, could he build a HA/GR car with it? It's not a V, but it's not inline either.
only my interpretation, but the rules do say "pre '62 inline, or flathead v8" that excludes opposed the way I read it. However, this also excludes v12, and I seriously doubt we'd exclude a car with a lincoln, Jaguar, Packard, Cadillac, or any other v12, as long as it met the pre '62 part
We are racing in an era that is about ten years before the Corvair came out. I have always liked the Corvair and that flat six. The 1962 engine cut-off was just a blurb in the rules, and no one really challenged it. I think you could build an interesting race car around that six. I'm just not sure how well it fits-in. Are you talking about using the entire engine, transaxle in a rear engine combination?
I'm a boxer motor fan myself. Not too many other folks have decently chopped a loop frame Beemer. However, the '62 cut-off was initially a carry over from the H.A.M.B. that simply allows us to make use of more available equipment to represent our era of infatuation. As such it's a good rule. This isn't a problem as long as the spirit of that earlier era is what we maintain (and it does give us considerably more hardware to work with). It is though, sometimes hard to remember that it's purpose is only to make parts of a preceding era's design concepts more available. It may help to try to think of it as "anything up to '62 that was designed around '52 engineering". I have to remind myself of that regularly as well.
I'm actually gathering parts right now for a 235/3-speed build-up, but got to thinking about the pancake motors and wondering if they would be legal for HA/GR. I read a lot of the posted issues about p***ing NHRA tech. I found a 4-door Corvair on craigslist that runs for cheap-thats what got the gears turning about the flat-4/6 motors. A VW or Corvair motor and trans bolted to some rails would make a neat set-up that could possibly sneak through tech as a "dunebuggy."
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